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Jasper port board curbs inserted into S.C. budget

COLUMBIA — A bill aimed at reining in one of South Carolina’s three members of the Ga.-S.C. Jasper Ocean Terminal Joint Project Office board was blocked in the S.C. Senate, so proponents have chosen a different method to get the job done.

The new approach is to attach it to the state’s spending plan, which the Senate will debate this week.

Last week the Senate Finance Committee approved two budget provisos proposed by Sen. Larry Grooms, R-37th District. The provisos, which are budget specifications that go in effect for a one-year period, are a way to get around a block against Grooms’ bill, S. 1410. That resolution was aimed at making sure a majority of South Carolina’s members of the six-person board couldn’t be overruled on a vote that involves spending state money. It also required certain actions to gain the consent of the S.C. Savannah River Maritime Commission.

On Thursday Sen. Clementa Pinckney, D-45th District, affirmed his objections to the proposed changes to South Carolina’s role in the JPO — now contained in the two budget provisos — and said he intends to oppose them during the upcoming budget debate.

Grooms, who serves on the Maritime Commission, had introduced S. 1410 after the JPO approved a plan in March to spread 13.4 million cubic yards of dredge materials from the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project onto the site of the future Jasper port.

Georgia’s three members and one South Carolinian had voted for the plan. South Carolina’s other two members abstained, questioning whether the action crossed into the territory of the Savannah River Maritime Commission.

The single South Carolina board member to join the three Georgia men was Bill Bethea of Bluffon. He and other supporters of the vote characterized the plan as one that would take advantage of Savannah’s $653 million harbor deepening — not endorse it — as a way to assist the construction of a shared Jasper Ocean Terminal.

But Grooms and most of the Senate saw the JPO’s vote as an action in favor of the harbor deepening.

They said it would also force South Carolinian taxpayers to chip in to a project they warn would damage the Palmetto State’s economy and environment, and preclude the construction of a shared, $5 billion Jasper Ocean Terminal.

Pinckney and Sen. Tom Davis, R-46th District, used a Senate maneuver to block S. 1410, which stopped it in its tracks ahead of the crucial May 1 Crossover Day deadline.

Bethea had warned that the proposal would sound the “death knell to port development in Jasper County,” if allowed to become law. Davis and Pinckney defended him.